Check Out This PRI Forum with Ethan Watters

I’ve been so obsessed with Robert Whittaker’s work that I’ve lost track of how Ethan Watters’ excellent book, Crazy Like Us, has fared recently. I got a very flattering invitation to participate in this PRI forum on America’s most profitable non-defense export: mental illness. I’ve already posted once, and I’ll probably return before the forum closes on May 31.

Many of the people writing in have not read Watters’ book, and as a result he’s been answering some of the most obvious questions and objections, which may be more valuable to the average reader than a detailed engagement with the nuts and bold of his argument. In any case, check it out.

I’ve had all sort of wacky symptoms since I cut out the meds a month or so ago. It’s a cheaper and less time-consuming madness than what I’ve had for the last several years, though, so I’m trying to ride it out.

Revolt and Resignation

In his collection of essays On Aging, Holocaust survivor Jean Amery said that one must meet the phenomenon of aging -- inevitable yet terrifying -- with both revolt and resignation. So it is with mental illness. To deny that I will always be manic-depressive would be true madness; at the same time, I must revolt against my condition, rejecting the idea that it defines and limits me.